Editor's comment - March 2017

We still have a long way to go to promote equality and encourage many more women to join the profession

In 2017, we might feel that we have come a long way in terms of equality – although certain global political movements of late may signal otherwise – so it is easy to get complacent about issues such as sexism in the workplace.

It can sometimes seem there is little left to fix, although many women will have tens, if not hundreds, of stories to tell of how they have experienced sexism in the workplace. We need male colleagues to act as advocates, and step in where they can see inequality taking place.

That is not to say things haven’t improved over the years. The percentage of females working in engineering has gone up from 7% to 9%, so things are moving in the right direction, albeit frustratingly slowly.

Arguments that women aren’t as interested in careers in engineering are often trotted out to explain away the low figures. But one need only look to other countries to rubbish such comments. According to the Women’s Engineering Society, Latvia, Bulgaria and Cyprus all boast a 30% female engineering workforce. We must ask what we can learn from them to encourage more women into engineering. We must also take a hard look at our education system, our cultural perception of the profession and general attitudes to women to begin truly tackling the under-representation in our sector of 50% of the population.

Engineering UK recently released its annual State of Engineering Report 2017, which did have some positive news, including that 9% more engineering and technology first degrees were obtained in 2014-15 than in the year before. But it also found that the number of students we need to be graduating and entering the profession is falling short by 20,000 a year. This shortfall could be lessened if more schemes were launched to encourage girls to study those all-important science, technology, engineering and maths subjects in school. The report found that boys in England, Wales and Northern Ireland are three-and-a-half times more likely to study A-level physics than girls – and five times more likely to gain an engineering or technology degree.

However, as a reader writes in our letters page this month, the issues that stop women from entering or staying in the profession may not be limited to gender, but could be blamed on the wider employment issues the sector is struggling with. Providing more continuing professional development and career opportunities could help to prevent the loss of workers to other sectors.

At least here in the PE office we can proudly say that the writing staff is now made up entirely of women – not necessarily something that would have happened even a few years ago owing to the technical subject matter that we cover. Finally, the team welcomes Katia Moskvitch, who will be taking on the role of editor from the next issue. An accomplished journalist, she is also a mechanical engineer. We look forward to carrying on producing high-quality news and features for PE readers with Katia at the helm.